Katie’s Notebook: March 13, 2024
Hello my friends,
The sun is shining and it’s my mom’s birthday! Since becoming a parent I feel like I have a deeper relationship with my parents. Sure, they spend time with my kids and we bond over how to raise them and how cute they are, but also I understand the many micro decisions and life lessons they imparted upon us. I recently had to pull out a lecture on equity versus equality with my 4 and 6 year olds in the context of who gets different specials things at different times which harkened back to the 90s version of ‘life isn’t always fair.’ I’m fortunate that my family is close in proximity as well as relationships. Happy birthday, Mom! Thanks for always reading my writing (and finally leaving the red pen aside and just telling me that I did a good job.)
ICYMI — I’ve written two longer form pieces in the last month:
Is an Academic Medical Center Partnership Right for Your Startup? This goes into the pros and cons of working with health systems for early stage companies and what you can expect out of those relationships with regards to financial commitments, timelines, and motivations. It’s niche, but if you are in that niche, you need to read this. Shoutout to my friend Donald for hashing it out with me!
Watches, Ring and Wristbands: What’s Happening in Consumer Wearables and Women’s Health This is part one of a two part series diving into how passive collection of biometrics can inform various areas of women’s health. Part one is what’s going on right now and part two will be future facing. Where can we go? The audience for this is anyone looking to purchase a new wearable, as well as researchers and clinicians considering utilizing devices for patient insights.
Without further adieu, here are my five for the issue:
I just celebrated four years of Well Made Health! I wrote a reflection post on being an entrepreneur and the comments and outpouring of support was really special.
The concept of Food as Medicine is hot right now. FarmboxRx’s Maternal Health program sends boxes of food with pregnancy and postpartum content to women on Medicaid. They also provide information on how to sign up for SNAP or WIC. Love love love. #sdoh
This video about choosing a spouse made me cry-laugh. IYKYK.
I’ve been closely following the ARPA-H Women’s Health Sprint and associated $100 million investment. I started an unofficial peer support group on LinkedIn where I’m housing relevant information as it comes out. It’s also a place to connect with potential collaborators in addition to finding them on the teaming spreadsheet. Feel free to join! I’m also chatting with companies interested in applying for the money and making connections as I can to support applications. Happy to help as needed!
The World Health Organization just released a scoping review: The role of digital health technologies in women’s health, empowerment, and gender equality: project report. I have been reading through the 75 pages, and one of the best takeaways popped out at me:
YES! YES! YES! If you are applying for the ARPA-H funds you may want to use some of the supporting statistics in this report in your application. One final thought— this scoping review looked at studies that indicated potential correlation between access to technology and women’s empowerment and equality. There are positive measures supporting that thesis. The drum I will continue to beat on and work on is a publicly available database of the evidence behind these technologies — understanding how effective each company and product is at improving health.
Thanks for sticking with me through this longer issue.
Until next time,
Katie
